, 1887-08-12

$1,000 AAA-N NAAAD hIOAS Vi lNDS
badly injured. The train was composed
OF SIX sleeping cars, six day coaches and
chair cars and three baggage cars. 1t was
carrying $50 passengers, all excursionisis.
and was bound for Niagara Falls. The
tram had been made up all along the line
of the Toledo, Peoria & Western road,
and the excursionists hailed from various
points in central Illinois; the bulk of
them, however, coming from Peoria.
Some passengers came from Canton, FL
Paso, Washington, and, in fact, all sta
tons along the line, some as TAR west as
Burlington and Keokuk, la.
A special and cheap rate had been
made for the excursion and all sorts of
people took advantage of it. When the
train drew out of Peoria at s o'clock last
evening it was
LOADED TO IT'S UTMOST CAPACITY.
Every berth in the six sleepers was taken
and the day cars carried sixty people
each. The train was SO heavy that two
engines were hitched to it, and when it
passed this place it was an hour and a
half behind time. Chatsworth, the next
station east of here, is six miles off, ard
the run there was made in seven minutes,
so that the terrible momentum of those
fifteen coaches and two heavy engines
shooting through space at the rate of
a mile a minute can be understood. No
stop was made at Chatsworth, and on and
on the heavy train with this living freight
sped through the darkness of the night.
Three miles east of Chatsworth is a
little slough, and where the railroad track
crossed there is a dry run about ten feet
deep and fifteen feet wide Over this was
stretched an ordinary wooden trestle
bridge, and as the excursion train came
laundering down on it what was the hor-
ror of the engineer on the front engine
when he saw that this
BRIDGE WAS ON FIRE.
Right before his eyes leaped the bright
flames, and the next moment he was
among them. There was no chance to
stop. Had there been any warning it
would have taken half a mile to stop that
on-rushing mass of wood. iron and human
lives. And the train was within 100
yards OF the red -tongued messenger of
death before they flashed their final sig
mails into the engineers face. But he
passed over in safety-the first engine
keeping the rails. As 1t went over the
bridge fell beneath. 1t could only have
been the terrific speed of the train which
saved the lives of the engineer and his
fireman. but the next engine went down
and instantly the
DEED OF DEATH WAS DONE.
Car crashed into car, coaches piled one on
top of another, and in the twinkling of
an eye, nearly one hundred people found
instant death and fifty more were so hurt
that they could not live. As for the
wounded, they were everywhere. Only
the sleeping coaches escaped, and as the
startled and half-dressed passengers came
tumbling out of them they found such a
scene of death as is rarely witnessed, and
such work to do that it seemed as if
human hands were utterly incapable.
A SCENE OF HORROR.
1t lacked but five minutes OF midnight.
Down in the ditch lay the second engi
neer, McClintock, dead, and Fireman
Applegate badly injured. On top were
piled the three baggage cars, one on top
Of another, like a child's card house after
he had swept 1t with his hands. Then
came the six day coaches. They were
telcscoped as cars never were before, and
three Of them were pressed into just
space enough for one. The second car
had mounted off its trucks and crushed
through the car ahead of it, crushing the
woodwork aside like finder, and it lay
there resting on the tops of the seats,
while every passenger in the front car
was laying dead and dying underneath.
Out of that car but four people came
alive.
On top of the second car lay the third,
and although the latter did not cover its
bearer completely its bottom was smeared
with the blood Of its victims. The other
three cars were not so badly crushed, but
they were broken and twisted in every
conceivable way and every crushed tim
Der and beam represented a crushed hu
man frame, a broken bone.
Instantly the air was filled with the
cries of the wounded and the shrieks of
those about to die. The groans of men
and the screams OF women combined to
make an appalling sound. and above all
could be heard the
ACCOUNTING LITTLE CHILDREN,
as in some instances they lay pinned along
side of their dead parents.
And there was another terrible damage
yet TO be met. The bridge was still burn
ing and the wrecked cars were laying
around the fCTcely burning embers.
Everywhere in the wreck were wounded
and unhurt men, women and children,
whose lives could be saved If they could
be gotten out, but whose death-and
death in a most horrible form-was GER
tain if the twisted wood of the broken
cars caught fire. And to fight a fire there
was not a drop OF water, and only some
fifty able bodied men who had still
presence of mind and nerve enough to do
their duty. The only light was the light
of the burning bridge, and with SO much
of its aid the fifty men went to work to
subdue the flames. For four hours they
FOUGHT LIKE FIENDS
and for four hours the victory hung in
the balance. Earth was the only weapon
with which the fire could be fought, and
SO the attempt was made to smother 1t
out. There was no pick or shovel to dig
it up, no baskets or barrows to carry in
so desperately they dug their uus
down into the earth, which a long
drouth had baked almost as hard as
stone. and heaped the precious handfulls,
thus hardly won. upon the encroaching
flames, and with this earthwork, handful
by handful, they kept back the foe.
While this was going on other brave
men crept underneath the wrecked cars,
beneath the fire and the wooden bars